Friday, August 21, 2015

I Farted :: Satire I:8

This month marks the sixth year of this blog.

Horace begins the poem with an image of a useless piece of fig wood, which is turned into a statue of Priapus, who, in turn, tells us the history of his garden home and regales us with a few anecdotes. At the end of the poem the statue splits its backside. Pepedi, Horace writes, assuming the voice of the statue, “I farted.”

Ridiculous and obscene. So wrote Franz Bücheler (1837–1908), a nineteenth-century classical scholar about Satire I:8. I suppose that Herr Büchler is right. Priapus who can scare away thieves with his membrum virile, as scholars trained following nineteenth-century morals would say, is an obscene figure. So are the two witches who do unspeakable things. As for ridiculous, what is more ridiculous than Priapus farting to scare the witches away? Not high-minded literature this—on the surface.

Below the priapic imagery, the ghoulish story-telling, we see Horace reminding us once again to consider the enormous changes taking place in Rome. Where once there was a pauper’s graveyard, now is a garden for the very rich. Where once robbers and witches and vultures (perhaps) came, now stroll refined people, taking in the salubrious air of Esquiline Hill [Collis Esquilinus].

This poem is fairly straight forward. Even so, there is a bit of Roman geography one needs to know. Here’s a map of hilly Rome, with the Agger marked with a blue line. The Agger was the Agger Tarquini or Murus Servii Tullii, a defensive barrier erected by a Tarquinian king named Servius Tullus, who ruled in the sixth century B.C. If you look carefully, you can see it running through Rome’s main train station on Esquiline Hill (According to Wikipedia, parts of this defensive wall can be seen in the MacDonald’s in the station. So, if you have taken the train to Rome and walked around its environs, you have walked where this poem takes place.

There are several individuals named in this poem. There is the witch Canidia, whom we have seen before, and some new characters with names, almost Dickensenian in the images they invoke. There is the scurra [parasite, sponger] Pantolabus (a Greek word meaning all-take). There is also the nepos [nephew or spendthrift] Nomentanus (a Roman surname, someone from Nomentum, now Mentana). Finally there are three odd ducks, Iulius, the fragilis Pediatia (nickname of a particular Roman knight on account of his effeminacy), and the thief Voranus (perhaps a freedman of Catulus, and a name that makes me think of voro devour, waste, eat greedily).

And there are two mythical names: Hecaten, who presides over encantations and Tisiphone, one of the furies. Her name means “avenger of murder.”

Translation ::

¶Once I was a tree trunk, a junk piece of fig wood.

when a carpenter man, unsure whether to make

a Priapus or a stool, decided on a god,

so god I am, to birds and thieves a huge terror.

My right hand stops the crooks,(plus the red pole juttin’

out of my nasty crotch) and a reed stuck on my

head spooks the pesky birds and keeps ‘em from settlin’

in the all-new gardens. Before a fellow slave

would put the bodies thrown out of their cramped cells and

brought here in cheap boxes.Here was the cem’tery

for the poor people, for the takers and wasters,

for the filth of this world. Here a sign used to mark

a field a thousand by three hundred feet: “Graves

Uninheritable.” But now you can live on

the “wholesome” Esquiline, stroll the “sun-filled” Agger,

where just a bit ago, the bereaved would see a

field ugly with white bones. Okay, I’m not worried

about being hassled and bothered as much by thieves—

and the usual wild beasts—as by those who with spells

and potions bend men’s minds. I can’t get rid of ‘em,
no way to hinder ‘em, once the inconstant moon
sticks out her shining face, from gathering up bones
and herbs that can harm you.

¶Me, I saw Canidia, her black cloak all cinched up,

hurr’ing, barefoot, hair loose,with Sagana, older,

yip-yowling. Their pallor made’em both look horrid.

They began to claw the ground with their fingernails

and with their teeth, to rip apart a black-wooled lamb.

Its blood ‘n stuff was poured into the hole so that

with this they could bring forth the departed, the souls

who’d give’em the answers. And a figure of wool

there was, another of wax.The bigger was of wool

so it could lord overthe littler one through pain;

the wax one stood there in humbly begging, slave-like

as if about to die. One witch called on Hecate,

the other one called on cruel Tisiphone.

You’d see snakes and bitches from hell wand’ring around,

a moon, red-shamed, watchin’ this stuff’d be hidin’

behind the big grave stones. Now, if I am lyin’

about any of this, let me smear my head with

crow shit, and let Julius come pee and crap on me,

and the twink Pediatia and the crook Voranus.

What should I say about it all? How the ghosts spoke

first one then the other echoeing Sagana,

sad and shrill, how they hid a wolf’s beard and snake fangs

secretly in the earth and how the fire from the

wax figure burned bigger and how I, innocent

bystander, shuddered at the voices of the two

Furies and at their deeds?
Just then, like the sound of an exploding bag,
with my asssplittin’ apart, fig-tree me farted,
and they ran to the city. You’d’ve seen Canidia’s
teeth come out, Sagana’s pile of false hair come off,
herbs andbewitched love-knots come tumblin’ (what a scream!)
out of their arms’ embrace.